How Search Volume Affects Brand&nbspLinks

The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

Distilled's Tom Critchlow recently gave a presentation on SEO Ranking Factors at Digital East. One of the key points he made is how brand links could potentially be affected by search volume. The higher the search volume for your brand, the more likely you are to appear in the brand links.

What is a Brand Link?

In May of 2010, Google announced via their blog that they had made brand refinements for product information in Google. Google's intent was to help inform users who are looking for information about a product, but are also unfamiliar with the brands that are associated with that product. The purpose of the brand links is to make it easier for users to find "popular" brands. According to their post, these "popular" brands are determined algorithmically.

For some head terms, these brand links would appear right below the paid search ads. These are especially influential for companies in the e-commerce space because it always helps to be associated as a "popular" brand with any product.

Many of the brand links pertain to articles of clothing, but they can also pertain to accessories (handbags).

It can even include equipment, such as bikes.

Or something as simple as office supplies, like pencils.

It's uncertain which factors are involved in identifying "popular" brands for head terms. However, there is strong evidence to suggest that each brand's corporate website and how optimized they are for keywords is not enough to result in a brand link. This is because many of the websites that do have brand links actually do not employ SEO best practices, such as using targeted keywords on the website.

For instance, I took a look at American Eagle to evaluate how optimized their site is for the head term "jackets", since they appear in Google's brand links for this term. Using SEOmoz's on-page report card tool, it was determined that American Eagle actually has an F grade for "jackets" optimization.

For the head term "jackets", American Eagle isn't even ranked in the first 3 pages of the SERPs. Thus, what are some possible reasons why American Eagle would receive a brand link for "jackets"?

Keyword Search Volume and Its Impact on Brand Links

One possible reason is due to increased search volume for the brand "American Eagle" in conjunction with the keyword "jacket". This was identified using Google's Insights for Search, which provides information about search volume trends. Thus, it is possible that Google is taking notice of which head terms are being associated with which brands, particularly in search queries. The rising searches below appear to be very similar to the type of brands that have brand links for the head term "jackets" (Hollister and Gap along with American Eagle).

This type of scenario also applies for other head terms, such as "sneakers".

Below is a breakdown of the totals for all the brand links + the keyword sneakers using the Google Insights for Search tool. According to Google, the totals numbers represent the number of searches conducted for a relative term compared to the number of searches on Google overtime. There were a significant number of searches for many of the brands as shown below.

Other Potential Factors

Upon further investigation, such as observing the rising search trends, there is evidence indicating that search volume is not the only factor influencing brand links. If that was the case, then "Adidas" sneakers should also have a brand link.

Although, it's not entirely clear why "Adidas" was left out of the brand links, a couple of hypotheses can be construed. For example, perhaps Google is taking into account the number of news mentions for a brand or even the number of social media mentions.

I tested out some examples of news mentions. In this case, Adidas sneakers received 96 Google News mentions.

On the other hand, New Balance sneakers, which has a brand link, received about 202 news mentions.

This one scenario is not definitive by any means and it's evident that more research would need to be conducted.

Similarly to news mentions, it is also possible that there might be some correlation between brand and social mentions (although it definitely does not appear to be a primary factor). To identify and quantify social mentions of handbag brands, Topsy's analytics were used. This chart compares brand mentions of Louis Vuitton handbags, Gucci handbags, and Guess handbags. From the graph, it shows that there has been significantly and consistently more social mentions for Louis Vuitton and Gucci handbags over the past month in comparison to Guess handbags social mentions. Perhaps, this is one of many reasons why Louis Vuitton and Gucci have brand links for handbags, whereas Guess does not.

It'd be interesting to compare current handbag brand links (or any other type of brand link) month by month. Which brands retained their brand link and which ones have lost them? Perhaps, after isolating different scenarios and noticing changes overtime, a better understanding of these links could be developed.

I'm interested to know the SEO community's experience with brand links and any observations that they have made on how these type of links have been acquired. I'm also curious to hear if any SEOs have any stories on how brand links affected brand searches/conversions and whether they are effective in creating brand awareness/increasing the amount of organic traffic or not. Please share your thoughts below; I'd love to hear from you.

About StephanieChang —

Director of Performance Marketing at Etsy. Former Senior Consultant / Head of New York at Distilled. Passionate about teaching & learning. Contact me on Twitter at @stephpchang

Excellent post. One of my client has this brand link. But to be honest i haven't done anything special to acquire it. It just popped up one day on its owns on SERP and not just for one generic term but several other generic terms. What i have observed is that Google uses top search queries and CTR data to determine association between your brand and a product. So if you have lot of branded searches like your brand + product name and high CTR (which you can determine through GWT) over years then you can expect to get a brand link provided you are popular brand in the first place. By popularity i mean lot of traffic, brand mentions, reviews, ratings etc. For e.g. Check the top search queries report of 'Northface' on Google insight.

Some of the top search queries are: northface jackets, northface backpack and northface fleece. Now search google.com for jackets, backpack and fleece search terms and you will see northface in brand links. Check the top search queries report of 'canon' on Google insight. Some of the top search queries are: canon powershot, canon camera and canon printer. Now search google.com for powerpoint, camera and printer.You will see canon in brand links. Now if you look at the top search queries report of 'adidas' on Google insight you will find that 'adidas sneakers' is not one of the popular search term. This can be one reason that adidas doesn't have brand link for the search term 'sneakers'.

Regarding traffic & conversions via brand links, i have not noticed any considerable increase either in traffic or sales. One reason can be, not many people use generic keywords when in a buying mood. For e.g a person searching for 'camera' is most likely looking for some information on camera than buying it. But if in the future Google started showing brand links for transactional queries like 'buy cheap camera' then i think it will just change the whole game and make it impossible for small brands to compete effectively via organic search.

Fantastic insight Himanshu. I also do believe that CTR is a determining factor and i'll definitely be looking into the search query reports in Google Insights. From personal experience, I also haven't noticed an increase in traffic or sales and it's likely that people searching for head terms are either still in the research phase or are not as adept at creating queries for search engines.

Also, Google is showing brand links for some transactional queries, like "buy phone" and "buy computer."

Another thing i would look out for is distribution and selection as potential analogs to citations and 'fresh content'. In other words, brands that are carried by LOTS of stores or brands that have a deep selection of styles/items could perform better than other brands that arent carried by as many online outlets or have as deep a selection. We had one case where we focused enough effort on [sport coats] that we earned a brand link under Stores for a while. We lost it and when i looked at page level metrics, vs other brands, couldn't links as determining factor. Did not do an exhaustive brand mention comparison but there was fairly consistent chatter about our brand most of the time.

My primary suspect at the time was click and poor engagement metrics connected to our new-found visibility for [sport coats]; maybe the lack of clicks made it clear we didn't deserve that brand link? Though as indicated in Himanshu, not sure everyone else saw many clicks from brand links. Also our new rankings for the keyword was middle of the page - could we have expected a ton of clicks?

Looking at the way the brand links behave, all they really do is pull up a SERP with that brand as a modifier. That's it. The page, then, should theoretically have a bunch of listings related to that brand that either point to other sites that carry their stuff (when you click Brands) or value-add middle-man sites that take you to the brand's store (when you click Stores - think affiliates or deal sites).

A deep SERP here is where I now tend to start to look for clues and best practices. Would love to hear other thoughts.

Somehow your post reminds me the Martin McDonald and the Rand one about influencing the Google suggest.

What still is a doubt is why Google decides that terms like "kids shoes" need the related searches snippet and others like "women shoes" no: could it be also the "specifity" of the query used part of this? Because it quite obvious, IMO, that also KWs like women shoes exist in a branded form.

Many ignore other signals that Google could be using for these types of results such as ppc, display advertising, secondary searches (I searched for jackets and then came back and searched for "Northface jackets", etc.) Did you consider the value of each as a ppc term?

What was the value of the #1 ppc term for Northface jackets, American Eagle jackets, etc.?

In addition, Google has access to much data and can determine these types of listings with combined factors as well. This would be very hard to determine and could also be simply applied by Google. It's the way I woudl do it if I wanted a relatively simple rule system but wanted to make it difficult for others to reverse engineer.

Like the idea to pull paid data in. In paid there are rules how you can bid on brands - different by country - and they can clearly use that to identify brand owners. Merge that with a whitelist, perhaps from a trademark database and Google might not need any other signals anymore.

although there are many factors which determine the Brand links but here.. in SEOmoz.. I am finding it easy to find some of those factors, social awareness, social popularity, Search volume for the set of some keywords such as "Brand name + Keyword", and may be ..even the Local search would play a major role in determining the brand links... I am desparate to know more about other factors influencing the determination of Brand links... thanks awesome post.

Fascinating study, Stephanie - I wonder if locality also plays a role here. If Google knows that you're searching within the vicinity of a particular brand's brick-and-mortar location, are they more likely to show up?

It's always killed me that my company's brand (REI) doesn't often show up for searches like the ones that you highlight above (bikes, jackets, etc.). So now I feel like I have some understanding as to why. Rock on and keep up the great work!

Great post Stephanie!
I had a look into how this applies in the UK market. I`ve used "handbags" as a keyterm and the brand links that appeared and the order in which they appeared had no correlation whatsoever with search trends, news or social mentions. Very interesting.

But i think brand + keyword applies to only products and not for services like "citi bank wealth management". The keyword here must be a product name and not the service name. since a service can also be brandable like the consultation services of a Security Management company or Wealth Managemant Company.

Once again I'll say you made my day by giving this well researched post.

An interesting observation; for Google UK searches, I don't get any brand links (Brands, Stores or Types), they only appear for US searches. Will be interesting to see if they start appearing for searches other than just US, some may have seen them already, I haven't yet.

I wonder if this expands to the order in which results in the Google product search are displayed.. will Google show products listed by what it perceives to be popular brands for that product above all others?

I also thought that could be a possibility and looked at Google product searches. Most of the brands that have brand links are visibile in product searches (such as Nike for sneakers), but others not so much. And for women's handbags, many of the brands in the product search don't have brand links (ex: Fossil, Ecco). Could be a factor, but really hard to tell.

What if your brand is linked with a term such as 'cult'. If you own that term, say brand name + cult on a landing page, will you further the Google Suggest issue or is it best to just take it? I ran our brand name in Google Insights and the brand name plus cult came up as 95% of searches.

Yes, it is more of a reputation management issue and we have split views over how to handle the approach. Some believe we should take it and run with it, explaining how the term 'cult' was attached to the company, etc. Others want to leave it alone so it doesn't propagate the term any more than it already has been.

I wish Google would roll out brand links for .ca the same time as .com... (we don't get brand links from Canadian searches!) Oh well...

I had one thought but after a few attempts in searching for "jackets" in Google's universal search 'Shopping', having an account in Google's Merchant Center does not appear influence what shows up in brand links. Wanted to raise that in case someone else spends any time querying this...

I have been investigating this as well and my hypothesis on the whole placement of brand links above SERP's is similar to yours.

We can only do so much to optimize the page and site structure as technical signals to search engine algorithms but there are many outside factors. Brand links are one of these where I strongly believe is effected by aforementioned search volume, social mentions, etc. which is really out of our control in many ways.